vorspeise
by mmus
Summary: There is not much to do but sit and wait. Short pre-Eldest fic.


This is rambling, wordy, and borderline purple-prose, but you know what? - I had fun writing it.

* * *

There is a cup on the table before him, filled to generous measure with what looks, to his travel-coarsened palate, like expensive vintage. It drew a startled laugh from him when they first dragged him in: what inappropriate and unlooked-for courtesy! Now, fixed to his chair with exhaustion and the certainty there is nowhere to run, he has time to ponder the mystery.

How came it down here, in a cell reserved by custom and the sturdiness of its brass-bound door for stubborn reprobates like him? He imagines the jailor - a big man, he decides, who cheats at dice because he can - carrying down the bottle in his spatulate fingers, and the absurd care he must have taken to set that delicate confection of glass upright, polish it clumsily, and oh-so-carefully fill it brimming with burgundy wine. Absurdity. He attempts another laugh, just for the spirit of the thing, but his throat has gone dry.

Still the question remains - why?

A threat? A bribe, treating a prisoner like the honored guest he could be if only he cooperates?

It is not the kind of subtlety the king would favor, Murtagh thinks, sobered by a memory of spitting rage. Another explanation, then.

Half glad of the distraction, half scornful of his need for one, he considers the cup itself, trying to glimpse intent in a facet of red glass.

Not much to see. Just the plaster walls and him - sunburn and dirty hair; blue eyes and bluer bruises. It is the same face it always is, much to his disgust.

Time passes, till the stillness grows uncomfortable; from all around the walls, painted figures stare holes in each other and him. If the sun is moving, somewhere above, he has no hint of its continued existence but the restless tumbling of his thoughts.

Sudden irritation: It is a cup full of wine, not one of his sagas so encrusted with symbol and allegory that hidden meaning oozes from every keyhole; why should it signify anything at all?

Another brace of minutes passes unremarked. He reconsiders. Maybe it _is_ some obscure sort of metaphor. A warning by analogy, delivered in deference to his sensibilities (for after all he is an educated man) -

"Look; this glass, this known and priced vintage, these are all that you are. Were we thirsty we would only have to stretch out our hands a little to pry out those secrets locked like jewels in the hollows of your skull."

But no worse than that.

For he has the - fortune, misfortune? - to be valuable in body as well as mind: made half of his father's name and half his mother's reputation. These things have the worth he does not. (blood, it all comes back to blood, and he cannot tell whether that is metaphor or memory or...)

Even in this he is separate, marked out from that bruised parade of wretches this chair has held in its time and who even now seem to crowd voicelessly behind every painted face. Not for him, the spit defiance guttering out its last minutes in a predictable kind of glory. No. They will drink him dry of value, and then, like some feast-day goblet put him to other uses. Scoured, polished, and packed away on a distant shelf.

Should he offer freely instead? Preempt, like any good tactician, the opening move of his opponent? For like the Twins that dragged him here (freed, for the first time in many weeks, from their tender ministrations, he takes a moment to curse them, as loudly and vilely as he can), he knows plenty about the king's enemies.

(Once, he even counted himself among them).

It would be a hard bargain, true; when he imagines the scales on which his future might be weighed, their pivot sits kissing-close to his own pan - It will take him a whole mountain's worth of secrets just to buy the merest scrap of freedom. If he knows anything worth bargaining over, that is.

There is also, he thinks as he makes another futile adjustment of his bruises against the wooden back, the question of treachery, of saving his own skin at the cost of a hundred others. And there _will_ be others, no matter what he might tell himself. Helpless is now; faithless he might be become, but he will not add delusion to that score.

So what will it be: betrayal, or a loyalty no-one will ever see?

Counterargument: the Varden were but his latest jailors and he owes them nothing. A cell for a cell, and his conscience clean as snow, if he can make himself believe it. He ruminates on that a while, gnaws on the injustice of his imprisonment, recalls the many insults of his life. Well-chewed, those bones yield little in the way of fresh bitterness.

Instead, memory: The books they gave him. A whole basket of scrolls, paper so fine it had flowed like cloth in his eager hands. Later, a sword. Grudging, it must be said, but still given. And in between, long hours of conversation in the warm lamplight.

"I value my own life before all others," he has said many, many times. In the empty stillness of the room, it is as though a weight lies on his tongue; he says nothing, and the thought retreats. He chases it feebly, unwilling to let that scrap of agency go, then gives up with a sigh.

No, not that escape either. For good or ill, he is not quite willing to leave that much of himself behind in the trap.

Heedless of the many spies no doubt engaged in the earnest business of divining the weak spots and fault lines of his mind from the merest gesture, he tilts his head back to stare at the ceiling. It is hard, to know that all his pains - the false names, the disguises, the long circular miles spent running from the whisper of discovery, even his vaunted neutrality - have come to no more than this. A cell, a chair, and a cup of burgundy wine.

This time, he does not even try to laugh.

It takes only a few moments for tired hypotheticals pose themselves once more: If only he had been a little - even? - less trusting. If only help had come in time. If only he had managed escape. If only…

If only he were not Morzan's son.

 _That_ old refrain. Self-mockery wins over pity, and he gives a rictus sort of grin. It drains the last resistant hope from him - no more false comfort; The end will come, whatever he does. Betray or stand fast, bluster or show fear, it is all the same, for there has never been any more to him than name and dubious birthright, and the king owns both down to his bones. Why then, would any sane man ask himself, are you preparing yourself for a fight?

 _Why not_ , he mutters, and shakes out his tired limbs in preparation to stand.

Oiled hinges turn in silence; The door opens and he freezes.

And then: "Drink up," his king says mildly. There is no falseness to him, no threat nor sugared friendliness.

Murtagh obeys. Stretching out arms that had never been bound, he brings the cup swiftly to his lips.

It tastes of nothing, but that too is no surprise.


End file.
